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Out of the Mouths of Babes...
Feb 18, 2012
In her new book, Joining the Resistance, distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan shows that as girls and boys mature, they lose touch with the instinctive, joyful, totally honest voice they were born with.
To some extent, this is necessary. No one would want to live in a chaotic society of adult two-year-olds all shouting and crying and singing at the top of their lungs whenever they felt like it!
But it's the loss of honesty that I find troubling, because it appears that when we lose touch with our own honest assessment of people and situations, we also lose the belief in our power to effect change.
***
When I was a young girl I was very sensitive to others' pain, and it didn't matter to me whether I was witnessing a tree being cut or a seal being tortured by a fishing net, I felt the pain so deeply that it became a wound in the innermost recesses of my own soul.
I'll never forget one beautiful spring morning, when I was about nine years old. My family lived in the city, and we always arrived at our country house on Friday nights, in the dark. On Saturday mornings it was my habit to get up early and go out for a walk by myself, reveling in the woods and fields and birdsong that I had missed during the week in the concrete canyons of New York.
On this particular May morning, full of sunshine and the fresh, moist air of spring, my buoyant good cheer was suddenly shattered by a shocking sight by the side of our driveway. The telephone company had come during the week while we were away and cut down a big swath of young trees underneath the cables that ran along the road, leaving behind heaps of dying limbs and saplings, heavy with oozing sap and shriveling new leaves.
A gut-wrenching feeling of horror clutched at me; I began crying, crooning to the trees, overwhelmed with a feeling of shame and guilt--why were my people, humans, so destructive, so wanton, so careless and thoughtless? I was outraged, upset, furious, and went running back up the driveway to tell my parents, assuming they would share my reaction.
But instead they shrugged, resigned--it was too bad, but there was nothing to be done about it.
***
And of course now, as an adult, my reaction would be the same. I witness road crews cutting back perfectly healthy trees all the time, and think nothing of it.
As we grow up, we get inured to the pain and suffering we visit on the natural world day after day. We learn to tolerate injustice with casual lack of attention. We lose the moral sensitivity with which we are born, and with it the fire within that impels little children to speak their truths and demand that the adults in their lives listen.
Told that it doesn't matter whether some trees are cut, or a cell tower goes up, or a dam is built, or that there is so much artificial light at night that we can no longer see the stars, we are gradually lulled, as adults, into complacency, from which it takes a lot to dislodge us.
This is no accident. Most educational practices consist of training the young to conform to authority and feed back the right answers to the questions asked.
It's not about learning how to ask the questions that haven't yet been formulated; the questions that come from one's deepest reservoirs of knowledge.
Socrates believed that human beings enter the world already knowing everything we need to know, but we forget it in the first weeks of life. We spend the rest of our lives, he believed, trying to remember.
As children, we know that we humans were born to live in harmony with the other living beings on this planet; to be a productive and positive part of the web of life that surrounds and sustains us.
Adults, I'm speaking to you: this is crucial knowledge that we need to remember, and act upon.
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Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Jennifer Browdy De Hernandez
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez teaches comparative literature and gender studies with an activist bent at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, MA and blogs at Transition Times.
In her new book, Joining the Resistance, distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan shows that as girls and boys mature, they lose touch with the instinctive, joyful, totally honest voice they were born with.
To some extent, this is necessary. No one would want to live in a chaotic society of adult two-year-olds all shouting and crying and singing at the top of their lungs whenever they felt like it!
But it's the loss of honesty that I find troubling, because it appears that when we lose touch with our own honest assessment of people and situations, we also lose the belief in our power to effect change.
***
When I was a young girl I was very sensitive to others' pain, and it didn't matter to me whether I was witnessing a tree being cut or a seal being tortured by a fishing net, I felt the pain so deeply that it became a wound in the innermost recesses of my own soul.
I'll never forget one beautiful spring morning, when I was about nine years old. My family lived in the city, and we always arrived at our country house on Friday nights, in the dark. On Saturday mornings it was my habit to get up early and go out for a walk by myself, reveling in the woods and fields and birdsong that I had missed during the week in the concrete canyons of New York.
On this particular May morning, full of sunshine and the fresh, moist air of spring, my buoyant good cheer was suddenly shattered by a shocking sight by the side of our driveway. The telephone company had come during the week while we were away and cut down a big swath of young trees underneath the cables that ran along the road, leaving behind heaps of dying limbs and saplings, heavy with oozing sap and shriveling new leaves.
A gut-wrenching feeling of horror clutched at me; I began crying, crooning to the trees, overwhelmed with a feeling of shame and guilt--why were my people, humans, so destructive, so wanton, so careless and thoughtless? I was outraged, upset, furious, and went running back up the driveway to tell my parents, assuming they would share my reaction.
But instead they shrugged, resigned--it was too bad, but there was nothing to be done about it.
***
And of course now, as an adult, my reaction would be the same. I witness road crews cutting back perfectly healthy trees all the time, and think nothing of it.
As we grow up, we get inured to the pain and suffering we visit on the natural world day after day. We learn to tolerate injustice with casual lack of attention. We lose the moral sensitivity with which we are born, and with it the fire within that impels little children to speak their truths and demand that the adults in their lives listen.
Told that it doesn't matter whether some trees are cut, or a cell tower goes up, or a dam is built, or that there is so much artificial light at night that we can no longer see the stars, we are gradually lulled, as adults, into complacency, from which it takes a lot to dislodge us.
This is no accident. Most educational practices consist of training the young to conform to authority and feed back the right answers to the questions asked.
It's not about learning how to ask the questions that haven't yet been formulated; the questions that come from one's deepest reservoirs of knowledge.
Socrates believed that human beings enter the world already knowing everything we need to know, but we forget it in the first weeks of life. We spend the rest of our lives, he believed, trying to remember.
As children, we know that we humans were born to live in harmony with the other living beings on this planet; to be a productive and positive part of the web of life that surrounds and sustains us.
Adults, I'm speaking to you: this is crucial knowledge that we need to remember, and act upon.
Jennifer Browdy De Hernandez
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez teaches comparative literature and gender studies with an activist bent at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, MA and blogs at Transition Times.
In her new book, Joining the Resistance, distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan shows that as girls and boys mature, they lose touch with the instinctive, joyful, totally honest voice they were born with.
To some extent, this is necessary. No one would want to live in a chaotic society of adult two-year-olds all shouting and crying and singing at the top of their lungs whenever they felt like it!
But it's the loss of honesty that I find troubling, because it appears that when we lose touch with our own honest assessment of people and situations, we also lose the belief in our power to effect change.
***
When I was a young girl I was very sensitive to others' pain, and it didn't matter to me whether I was witnessing a tree being cut or a seal being tortured by a fishing net, I felt the pain so deeply that it became a wound in the innermost recesses of my own soul.
I'll never forget one beautiful spring morning, when I was about nine years old. My family lived in the city, and we always arrived at our country house on Friday nights, in the dark. On Saturday mornings it was my habit to get up early and go out for a walk by myself, reveling in the woods and fields and birdsong that I had missed during the week in the concrete canyons of New York.
On this particular May morning, full of sunshine and the fresh, moist air of spring, my buoyant good cheer was suddenly shattered by a shocking sight by the side of our driveway. The telephone company had come during the week while we were away and cut down a big swath of young trees underneath the cables that ran along the road, leaving behind heaps of dying limbs and saplings, heavy with oozing sap and shriveling new leaves.
A gut-wrenching feeling of horror clutched at me; I began crying, crooning to the trees, overwhelmed with a feeling of shame and guilt--why were my people, humans, so destructive, so wanton, so careless and thoughtless? I was outraged, upset, furious, and went running back up the driveway to tell my parents, assuming they would share my reaction.
But instead they shrugged, resigned--it was too bad, but there was nothing to be done about it.
***
And of course now, as an adult, my reaction would be the same. I witness road crews cutting back perfectly healthy trees all the time, and think nothing of it.
As we grow up, we get inured to the pain and suffering we visit on the natural world day after day. We learn to tolerate injustice with casual lack of attention. We lose the moral sensitivity with which we are born, and with it the fire within that impels little children to speak their truths and demand that the adults in their lives listen.
Told that it doesn't matter whether some trees are cut, or a cell tower goes up, or a dam is built, or that there is so much artificial light at night that we can no longer see the stars, we are gradually lulled, as adults, into complacency, from which it takes a lot to dislodge us.
This is no accident. Most educational practices consist of training the young to conform to authority and feed back the right answers to the questions asked.
It's not about learning how to ask the questions that haven't yet been formulated; the questions that come from one's deepest reservoirs of knowledge.
Socrates believed that human beings enter the world already knowing everything we need to know, but we forget it in the first weeks of life. We spend the rest of our lives, he believed, trying to remember.
As children, we know that we humans were born to live in harmony with the other living beings on this planet; to be a productive and positive part of the web of life that surrounds and sustains us.
Adults, I'm speaking to you: this is crucial knowledge that we need to remember, and act upon.
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